When Marianne Lewis left the Tulip at 6 p.m. for a night cruise on the Danube, she was wearing the new yellow dress, high heels, and the white cardigan. (“So becoming, Marianne,” the manager offered.) She was carrying a small bag with a few warmer things, she explained, in case it was cool on the river. She took a cab to Szabadság Square, pretended to be interested in the grand building that used to house the Hungarian National Television and, before that, the Stock Exchange. She read the brass plaque on the side of the building twice while checking whether she had been followed. She saw only two American tourists trying to locate the U.S. Embassy, the white colossus on the far side of the square, guarded by several uniformed policemen and a few U.S. marines.
She walked back along Nádor Street to the Four Seasons Hotel Gresham Palace and flashed a smile at the doorman as she entered quickly, pretending to be busy on her cell phone. She sat in the lobby and waited to see if anyone was following. She knew that if you looked like a tourist, it was safe to sit around in a good hotel in a foreign city, as long as it was not in the Middle East.
It was a quiet evening at the Gresham. Light music wafted from the bar. A few people were checking in or out. A half hour later, she went to the ladies’ room, where she changed out of the yellow dress into the track pants and a grey sweater, took off the black wig, gelled her hair into soft peaks, and added a bit of eye makeup and lip gloss. In the lobby, a big man in a blue tracksuit, pretending to read the newspaper, was sitting across from the front desk, where he had a good view of everyone coming in or leaving. He looked at her for a moment, returned to his paper, then looked at her again. She wondered whether she had seen him before, whether he was one of Azarov’s men.
She sat down in an armchair a bit to his left, where she could observe him, and ordered a café crème. She was polite to the waiter, but not too polite, and friendly but not too friendly to the concièrge when she asked about reservations for the Budapest Dance Theatre, then for a cab. She wanted to leave the general impression she was a guest in the hotel but not so as to draw undue attention to herself.
Using one of her disposable cell phones, she called James at Christie’s. Why would they ask her to identify a Corot when he was well past her own era of interest?
“Because it’s in Saint-Denis,” he said. “Close to where you live. And you had to have studied Corot, even if he was not of great interest.”
“I never cared for Corot,” she said. “What is it?” Could James have found out about Simon? If so, when? Very few people knew. Who could have told him?
“A Farnese Gardens, and it’s a late work, judging from the photograph they sent me. Or he didn’t even paint it.”
Corot had done at least twenty of those, she thought, and there were always copies floating around. Some of those may even be his own. Most of the Corots Simon had sold were fakes but, as he told her, this had not decreased their resale value. Besides, since they were fakes, they were unlikely to ever appear on the Art Loss Register.
“I’ll do it in a couple of days,” she said. Christie’s paid well and unusually quickly. Her only concern was whether James had decided to use her for this because he knew, or suspected, something.
She asked the driver to take a scenic route along the river and up through the Buda side streets. When she emerged from the taxi at the Budget rental in Óbuda, she was fairly sure no one had followed her. She had learned the evasive techniques from Simon, but back then she thought they were playing a game. It was a couple of years before he told her the truth.
The small grey Fiat was waiting two streets west of the Budget lot, where she had left it when she arrived. She had paid in Vienna for the whole week and had arranged to drop it off at their office in Dunakeszi, a short drive upriver. She applied a bit more lipstick and a touch more gel to her hair, drove the car to the Budget lot, and dropped the car keys into the car-return kiosk’s safety box, then she walked to the small railway station nearby. There was no ticket booth here and no lounge. It was just a short stop where the Budapest–Bratislava run took on food and drink.
The conductor stamped her Eurorail Pass and told her that it was good for only another two days. She should maybe purchase a new one.
She smiled at him, nodded, but didn’t say anything. She didn’t want to be remembered.
At the Slovak border, the Hungarian crew was replaced by a Slovak crew who stamped the ticket again.
She got off at Dunajská Streda.
Knowing little about Dunajská Streda, she had suggested the Roman Catholic church as a rendezvous. If there was one thing you could be sure of in a small town that had belonged to six countries in three decades, it was its people’s devotion to religion, and this part of central Europe was Catholic. The church was easy to find by its tall white tower. Heavy black door. It was cool inside, a white cross over the altar, a statue of the Virgin, translucent glass windows, wooden confessional, a couple of vases with flowers. A man was praying in the back pew.
She waited near the white baptismal font until he approached. Tall, lean, and slightly hunched, wearing jeans and a loose black jacket, he was about thirty years old and singularly plain.
“Have you been waiting long?” she asked in English.
“Not long,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper. He looked down at his worn brown sandals. Then they stood quietly surveying the transept as if there were something there to see.
When he unbuttoned his jacket, her right forefinger curled around the SwissMini, but she didn’t take it out of her pocket. She could pull it out, aim, and fire it in under five seconds, another of Simon’s legacies. He was moving slowly, breathing through his open mouth. Since he had been kneeling only a few pews away, it couldn’t have been from exertion. More likely, he was nervous. A stale, unwashed smell hit her as he opened his jacket. Under it, his shirt was grimy and frayed around the collar. Lying flat under his right arm and across his belly, there was a loud orange-and-yellow painting: striped hay, round yellow sun, a patch of dark sky.
“My mother wants to sell it,” he said.
The woman she had spoken with was Gertrude, Géza Márton’s girlfriend from his youth. She had a strong Hungarian accent over a reasonable, old-fashioned French, the kind they had once taught in Catholic schools in central Europe: traditional, strict grammar but not much conversation. Helena had suggested they speak in German, but she wouldn’t abandon French.
“She said you would know what it’s worth,” he said.
“I don’t do Impressionists,” Helena said.
“We need the money.”
“I am sorry.”
“My mother said you want to meet her. And we thought . . .”
Buying this poor van Gogh imitation could be the price of a visit with Gertrude. Helena said she would think about it. When he didn’t move, she said she knew other people who might want the painting, and that bit of encouragement worked. She wondered what Géza had told them. He’d objected to Helena’s insistence that there had to be confirmation that the painting was his and had needed some persuading to make the call, but she noted that he already had the number. He would have had to explain why she was coming all the way to Dunajská Streda, why it was important that she should meet Gertrude. He had said he had never talked with Gertrude about the painting in Budapest.
“I’ll show you the way,” the young man said and walked stiffly up the aisle to the side door. When he opened it and offered to let her go through first, she declined. She did not like anyone behind her and this man seemed deceptively strong. It was an old habit that had saved her life before.
They walked along a narrow street, then through a square behind the church.
The house was small, but it overlooked the churchyard, pretty this time of year with sour-cherry trees heavy with bloom. “The gravestones are all Hungarian,” he told her. “Some of them were knocked over when Fico was in power. He always hated Hungarians.” Helena knew that Fico had been the Slovak prime minister for a few years in the 2000s and that he was an ultra-nationalist with an abiding hatred of Hungarians and tearful nostalgia for the time Hitler had granted Slovakia independence under Father Tiso, a Catholic priest with not much holiness and a fondness for fascists.
“My grandmother is in one of those graves,” he said. “She died in Budapest, but she wanted to be buried here. It was not easy to make the arrangements. We were both socialist republics by then, but suspicions didn’t die with Soviet rule. My grandfather survived for a little while. He missed the fertile earth here. Mother told me he never could settle for the scrub in Eastern Hungary.”
“They moved here after the war?”
He nodded. “I think they had no choice.”
“And you? Are you Slovak or Hungarian?”
“I was born in Budapest,” he said. “I’ve learned the language here, but not much else.”
Gertrude was brewing tea in the tiny kitchen. She wiped her hands on her full gingham skirt and, although she seemed nervous and uncertain, she offered her hand for a friendly shake. “Was the train late?” she asked in French. She must have kept the skirt in a trunk for special occasions. It smelled of lavender and was in pre-war country style.
Helena shook her head. “Mais nous n’avons pas beaucoup de temps,” she said, “je suis presque en retard pour le rendez-vous avec votre ami.”
“If you mean my former husband, he is not my friend,” Gertrude said. “I haven’t seen him in twenty-five years, and our relationship has not — how do you say? — remained close.”
She was in her mid-eighties, but Helena could see she had once been an attractive woman. She had soft white hair with flecks of brown, brushed to one side and flipped at the ends. Her face was lightly lined under the eyes and around the mouth, which gave her a sad, thoughtful expression, as if she were trying to recall something upsetting. The only signs of age were the skin pouch under her chin and the deep wrinkles around her neck that she had tried to cover by pulling her collar up. She had blue eyes, the same shade as her blue blouse, and a high forehead she had emphasized by pinning her hair back from her face.
She led the way into a small living room that looked onto the churchyard. “Sit here,” she said, pointing to a pink chair with warped cushions facing the window. When they were both settled, Gertrude said, “You have come a long way to ask me about someone I hardly know now, and I am not sure I ever really knew.”
Her son brought in a pretty floral tea service on a tray and then left. The cups hadn’t seen much use — the thin gold bands around their rims were largely undamaged.
Her hands were steady when she poured the tea.
“Géza said you married János in 1957. You left him in 1981. That’s twenty-four years, a long time,” Helena said. “You must have known him reasonably well. In 1970, he was in the justice ministry, wasn’t he? He must have been quite special to have achieved such a high position. Géza said he was a man with little education.”
“Not much formal education, but he read a great deal. He read in Russian and English and French. Hungarian, of course. Russian was easy, we were all taught the basics in school, but he really had to work for the rest. I was his French tutor. That’s how I met him. My mother had taught me French. She had gone to a convent school. He learned quickly. He was interested in reading French writers in the original: Victor Hugo, Rabelais, Stendhal, Francois Villon. Did you know that Villon was a big success in Hungary? Translated by György Faludy. János was interested in how much Faludy had changed the poems from the original.”
“Faludy?”
“A great Hungarian poet. János was also interested how Faludy came to translate those particular poems. He told me that Faludy was not to be trusted, either as a translator or as someone serving the cause.”
“The cause?”
“Socialism. Communism. Whatever. Faludy was, I think, still in jail at the time. János suspected most Hungarians offered lip service to such politics but they were not engaged by the ideas.”
“Why did you leave him?”
Gertrude gazed at the low table between them for a few minutes before she answered. “He changed with the times. I didn’t. I prefer a simple life. János knew what was going to happen, long before they reburied Imre Nagy with all the pomp and circumstance fitting for a former prime minister. You know he was killed after ’56.”
“And you came here. Why?”
“Why here? It’s safer. János is a powerful man. I wanted to move my son out of his way, so he could be whatever he wanted to be. And my mother is buried over there.” She turned to face the churchyard.
“Did he ever talk about Géza Márton?”
“Maybe a couple of times. I was glad Géza had left in ’56. It was safer for him to be elsewhere.”
“Did he talk about Géza’s father’s trial?”
“Not to me,” Gertrude said. “I told him I had been to Géza’s home and met his parents. Géza’s father was not in the Party. He didn’t believe in it. He was the one who convinced Géza to leave in ’56.”
“But you knew János helped convict Géza’s father?”
Gertrude picked up her cup but put it down quickly. Her hand was shaking. “Not really. I knew he was involved in the trials, but I thought it was just about what he’d seen in front of Party headquarters. János was lucky he wasn’t inside that day and lucky no one recognized him where he was. Everybody knew about the killings. The ÁVO men coming out of the building with their hands up, shot all the same, then strung up by their feet and left to hang upside down from the trees. It was in all the papers. Even in America. But whether Géza’s father was there, I don’t know.”
“He wasn’t. But that didn’t matter. János claimed that he was there, and he was believed. Perhaps there was some unfinished business between János and Géza?”
Gertrude giggled, a bit girlishly, but it suited her face, and her sad expression lightened. “You mean because I had walked out with Géza? I doubt János would have cared, even had he known.” Helena liked the old-fashioned expression “walking out,” though it didn’t really work in French.
“He would have known everything about Géza,” Helena said. “There were files. State security collected information on everyone — you know that — and they were particularly interested in anyone who had been in a Soviet labour camp. When did you meet him?”
“A couple of years after he came home,” Gertrude said. “He was still emaciated, starved for human contact as much as food. We met on the street near the opera house, where we both lived. He helped me with a bag of coal. I thought he was too weak to carry it, but he insisted. Later, he would sometimes visit and hover in our kitchen while I cooked. He said he wanted to smell the dinner. It’s how we became . . .”
“Friends?”
“We were more than friends,” Gertrude said quietly, as if her son were still in the room. “But he was still so . . . damaged.”
“Did he ever mention anyone he knew in Vorkuta?”
“I don’t think so. But he didn’t like talking about his time there. He had suffered too much. He wanted a new start in life. How is he now?”
“He’s fine. We tend to get over things more easily when we are older, don’t you think?”
“Some of us brood,” Gertrude said, lightly. “I think he brooded too much. He couldn’t forget, no matter how hard he tried. He was never happy to be living in Hungary under the Communists. He didn’t say anything, but it was obvious. He must have decided to leave after the Revolution. He didn’t tell me. He sent me a postcard later, from Salzburg, saying goodbye and wishing me a long, happy life.”
“He waited for you until December, more than a month after the Russians came in.”
Gertrude nodded. “He may have thought I would go with him,” she said with a shrug. “But I couldn’t leave my parents. They were already old in middle age. They’d had a hard life.”
“Have you heard from him since then?”
“Not for years. It had been such a long time since I last heard his voice, but I recognized it when he called.”
“When?”
“When did he call? A few weeks ago. He wanted to know about János at the end of the war. Whether he had been sent to a Soviet labour camp. Such an odd question. Especially as I didn’t meet János until ’57.”
“Did you know?”
“What?’
“What happened to János in ’45.”
Gertrude shook her head. “He never talked much about the war. Only about the liberation and the Soviet army handing out food to the kids who emerged from the cellars after the siege. I thought his father had been in the Communist Party before the war. The police picked his father up in ’43 or ’44 and handed him over to the Germans. János never saw him again. He later got some kind of medal in recognition of his father’s bravery. He wore it sometimes — it had a five-pointed star, I remember that. He always marched in the May 1 parades, even after we didn’t have to. When barely anyone else went out to celebrate International Workers’ Day.”
“When was Jenci born?”
“In 1978. And no one marched as enthusiastically as János did, holding baby Jenci in the crook of his arm. He was so little.” She smiled. “János took him up to the top of Gellért Hill where the Soviet memorial stood and told him about the liberation, as if Jenci could understand. I think those two statues have been moved.”
“To the Communist statues park, in the 1990s.”
“I guess we were no longer grateful for being liberated.”
“Did János ever mention the Soviet labour camps?”
Gertrude seemed to be thinking. “I am almost sure he didn’t. That was a forbidden subject then. No one talked about the maljenki roboters. Not even people who had been there. Géza barely mentioned it, although he was there for more than three years. Once, we were walking along the river, and I asked him. We knew enough not to talk about it inside. Our homes were bugged, and there were informers everywhere — people we knew who sold other people’s secrets for personal gain.”
“And János?”
“He was a ranking officer in the service of the state. He wouldn’t have acknowledged they existed except to re-educate enemies of the regime. Fascists. People like Faludy, Rajk. Or to punish spies serving the capitalist conspiracy.”
“Do you think it’s possible János was in one of the camps himself?”
Gertrude shook her head. “I can’t imagine that. He was such a true believer. Why would they have picked him up?”
“The soldiers were not particularly choosy whom they picked up. They didn’t question them about their politics. János, like Géza, could have just been in the wrong place.”
“But, unlike Géza, János believed all the Soviet propaganda. He was not cynical like Géza was. He didn’t complain about lack of freedom. Had he been in a Soviet camp, he would have had doubts.”
“Would you have known if he had doubts?” Helena asked.
“I think I would have known, if anyone did.”
“But you’re not sure . . .”
Gertrude gazed out the window for a moment before she replied. “Can you ever be sure of anything about another person? Why do you ask?”
Helena shrugged. “It’s important for Géza.”
“Now? Why now?”
Helena was not going to tell Gertrude the whole story, but she had to give her something or she would not help them. “There is something of Géza’s that János has and Géza wants it back.”
“What is it?”
“It’s a big painting of Christ entering Jerusalem,” Helena said.
“János has an eye for paintings,” Gertrude said. “Even works by foreign artists. Some were religious, although he doesn’t believe in religion. There were even a few he liked that the regime would not have found socialist enough. Abstracts. My mother had pictures of Jesus and Mary in our apartment. János said they made him feel uncomfortable. Too much religion, he said. We didn’t even have a church wedding.”
“But you do remember a large painting of Christ on a donkey with a bunch of people waving and cheering . . .”
“There was one painting of Christ. I didn’t much like it. It was too dark.”
“Had you ever seen it before?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Maybe at Géza’s?”
“I didn’t go to his place.”
“And you have no idea when he got it?”
Gertrude shook her head.
“Did he use a dealer to buy his art?”
“I don’t think so. But back then, he invited a lot of people to our place. Some of his friends from work, some he had known for many years. One of them may have been a dealer.” She stirred more sugar into her cup. The tea must have been cold by then.
“Among János’s friends, do you remember anyone they called Bika?”
Gertrude shook her head again. Did she do it too quickly? “But sometimes I would go to my room and he would meet with his friends alone.”
“Are you quite sure?”
Gertrude looked down at her lap. “Bika?” she asked.
“Yes. Bull, in Hungarian.”
“I don’t think so,” she said. Helena didn’t believe her.
“Did you ever invite your own friends?” Simple curiosity, but Helena couldn’t resist.
Gertrude seemed to think about that for a while, as if it were a question that had never occurred to her before. Then she decided not to answer. Instead, she said, “Géza said you were an art expert.”
“Yes. It’s what I do.” Which was part of the truth. “Géza grew up with this painting. It has sentimental value. He wants it back before he dies.”
“Has he been ill?”
“No, but he is old.”
“Why would he even want such a painting? Has he become Catholic?”
“He has a collection.”
“Géza has an art collection?”
“A few pieces. But this particular one has sentimental value.”
“You want me to talk to János?”
“I don’t think it would help,” Helena said.
Gertrude gathered the cups and went to the kitchen. Her son appeared and placed the fake van Gogh on the table. He had stuck it in a brown frame but that didn’t improve its appearance.
“Perhaps Géza would like this one, as well,” Gertrude said when she came in, “if he has the money to buy art.”
“I told your son I would see what I can do,” Helena said.
“Please take another look at it. I want to send Jenci back to school. I think he would do well in Canada. He was a good student and he speaks English already.” She took a deep breath. “We need the money, you see.”
“How much?” Helena asked.
“Could you manage ten thousand euro?”
Not wanting her decision to seem too quick, Helena looked at the painting for a few minutes before she nodded. “We’ll have the money transferred to your bank.” Géza would surely send the money, and if he refused, she would send it herself.
When his mother went into the bedroom, Jenci took the painting out of the frame, rolled it up, and tied it with a ribbon. Helena told him to keep it until she came back to collect it. She couldn’t risk taking it on a train, she said. They might ask to see its papers. They both knew they didn’t bother with that sort of stuff now that both Slovakia and Hungary were in the European Union, but he let it go. Their interest was in getting the money, not in selling a painting.
“Have you ever met Géza Márton?” Helena asked him.
“Yes, of course,” he said with an uncertain smile.
“Here?”
“Not only here.”
“Where else?” Helena asked, but Gertrude came in just then, and Jenci stayed quiet.
***
Twenty minutes later, Helena was in an almost-new dark-blue Fiat Sport. She had rented it, paying cash, using her Austrian licence for identification in the name of Maria Steinbrunner. The photo was of a woman with black hair cut in a fringe, dark under the eyes, rimless glasses. It was not one of Helena’s favourites, nor had Ms. Steinbrunner been.
She called Géza before crossing the border back into Hungary. He wanted to know what Gertrude had said about the Titian, but he was even more interested in how Gertrude was and what she had said about Krestin. Were they still in touch? When she described the painting Gertrude had offered to sell, Géza laughed so hard he dropped the phone — at least that was what Helena assumed from the crash and scramble at Géza’s end of the conversation.
“We’ll give her the money,” he said when he had recovered. “I’ll have it transferred in the morning.”
Interesting, she thought, he must already have her account information.